Revenue growth doesn’t always mean business health. Our experts reveal the critical KPIs that separate sustainable success from companies heading toward trouble.
Revenue is up, but cash flow is tight. Sales are strong, but customer retention is slipping. Sound familiar? Many business owners focus on vanity metrics while overlooking the indicators that truly reveal their company’s health.
This week on Let’s Talk, our panel of business experts cuts through the noise to discuss the KPIs that matter most. From the delicate balance between growth and profitability to the warning signs hiding in plain sight, discover which metrics successful entrepreneurs monitor, and why tracking the right numbers could be the difference between sustainable success and a house of cards.
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Steve Evans, Founder and CEO, ConnectOS
“Most businesses track revenue, margins and customer satisfaction. They matter. But the clearest signal of a healthy, high-performing business is the effectiveness of its people. When employees are engaged, supported and doing work they’re skilled at, performance follows.
Data consistently shows that disengaged employees cost businesses through lower productivity and increased turnover. When skilled employees spend significant time on low-value, repetitive tasks, utilisation drops and burnout risk rises – directly impacting output and retention.
High-performing organisations actively measure leading indicators such as employee engagement and satisfaction scores, utilisation of skilled roles, time-to-hire for critical positions, voluntary attrition, and cost per unit of output. They also track how much payroll is allocated to non-core work versus growth-driving activity.
Healthy businesses redesign workforce structures to improve these metrics, shifting routine work away from high-cost talent and enabling teams to focus on strategy, innovation and customer outcomes.
ConnectOS helps companies optimise workforce performance for its offshore teams, improving productivity, engagement and cost efficiency at the same time.”
Annette Densham, Writer, Award Writing Services
“Visibility is a KPI. If no one knows you exist, it doesn’t matter how brilliant your thinking is, how good your offer is, or how many times you update your website, you cannot sell the invisible.
If you take yourself out of the conversation or aren’t even a part of it, it doesn’t matter what other KPIs you’re striving to meet, being the best kept secret isn’t a strategy and it certainly doesn’t help sell anything.
Visibility is about staying in people’s minds. That has to be planned, scheduled and treated with the same seriousness as revenue targets. Christmas is where this really shows when people pause and disappear until mid January, and then have to scramble to remind people they exist and wonder why their pipeline feels frigid.
You can track this through metrics but the best KPI is when someone tells you they’ve been following you for a while, that helps with sales conversations and conversions.
A healthy business is about creating demand. Visibility shows you whether people are aware of you, remembering you, and paying attention before they’re ready to buy. If that’s happening, the business is alive and kicking. If it’s not, everything else is working harder than it needs to.
Visibility exposes risk early. If engagement drops, or messages dry up,t that tells you that you’re slipping out of the conversation.Visblity also shows momentum, when people reference past posts, quote your thinking back to you, or approach you already aligned with how you work, that’s your message is landing and sticking.”
Sharon Melamed, Managing Director, Matchboard
“Matchboard is a business matchmaking platform so our key KPI is what percentage of our matches (where we connect buyers with suppliers) consummate a deal. No surprises, our success rate is significantly higher than a dating site! We aim for a 20% average across all service lines, but our most popular categories – business process outsourcing (BPO) and consulting – achieve much higher conversion. If readers are looking for outsource providers or consultants, they can try for themselves – the site is free to use.”
Matthew Owens, Director, Annexa
“The basics of a healthy business are well understood and most finance leaders already track them closely – consistent cash flow, growing revenue and margins that hold up as the business scales.
Where the picture starts to change is when you look beneath those headline numbers. Instead of simply seeing cash flow tighten, you can trace it back to specific drivers, such as customers paying late, regions behaving differently, inventory sitting longer than expected or inefficiencies in how orders are fulfilled and invoiced. KPIs like operating cash flow, days sales outstanding and inventory turnover show whether growth is funding the business, while margin trends by product, customer or channel reveal how the underlying economics are shifting.
You only get that kind of visibility when finance and operations are looking at the same numbers, with a cloud ERP providing the shared foundation underneath the business.”
Maria Kathopoulis, CEO & Chief Marketing Officer at UNTMD Media
“Healthy businesses measure movement, not noise.
There are five KPIs that show the real state of your company:
- Customer acquisition cost tells you if you are buying growth profitably.
- Customer lifetime value shows the long-term strength of your model.
- Sales cycle length reveals how quickly revenue enters the business.
- Retention or repeat purchase rate indicates true brand strength.
- Operating margin shows whether scaling actually improves your wealth.
If these five are trending up, the business is healthy regardless of likes, impressions or followers.”
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Greg Wilkes, CEO of Develop Coaching
“Most business owners track far too many numbers. Dashboards packed with data. Weekly reports no one really uses. Let’s be honest, more KPIs don’t mean more control. The right ones do.
If you want a clear read on business health, focus on five:
- Cashflow runway: Not profit. Cash. How many weeks can you trade if sales slowdown tomorrow? If you don’t know that number, you’re driving without fuel gauges. Cashflow is oxygen.
- Gross margin: This tells you whether your core operation actually works. If your margin is sliding, growth will hurt you, not help you. Margin is discipline, not ego.
- Net profit: This is what’s left after everything, including your wage. If you’re turning over more but taking home the same money, the business isn’t healthier, it’s heavier.
- Customer acquisition cost versus lifetime value: If it costs £3,000 to win a client who only ever spends £4,000, you’ve built a treadmill. Healthy businesses win repeatable, profitable clients.
- Founder time allocation: Track where your hours go. If you’re stuck in day-to-day delivery, the business depends on you to survive. That’s fragile.
Healthy businesses are simple to read. Fewer numbers. Better decisions. And a clear answer to one question, does this business give me profit, resilience, and options?
Get these KPIs right early in 2026 and the rest of the year gets easier. You stop guessing. You spot problems sooner. You double down on what actually pays. Do the work in January and February, set the benchmarks, lock the habits in. Then let the numbers guide decisions week by week. Momentum follows clarity. And clarity is what drives real gains all year long.”
Deb Hopper, Occupational Therapist, Life Skills 4 Kids
“When evaluating the health of an allied health business, it’s vital to look beyond just revenue. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as client retention, rebooking rates, and new client acquisition show demand and client satisfaction. Staff utilisation rates highlight how much of your team’s time is billable—low rates may mean inefficiency, while high rates can risk burnout. Financial KPIs like profit margin, cash flow, and wage-to-income ratios are crucial for sustainability, and monitoring leave accruals helps manage future liabilities. Tracking cancellation and DNA (Did Not Attend) rates can reveal issues with scheduling or client engagement.
However, true business health also depends on staff wellbeing and meeting the needs of NDIS participants. Supporting staff with regular check-ins, professional development, and flexible work arrangements is essential to prevent burnout. For clients, especially those under the NDIS, clear communication and tailored therapy plans are vital.
Despite best efforts, maintaining a viable allied health business is becoming extremely difficult. With inflation, therapists locked into set prices from the NDIS price guide for seven years and recent cuts to travel reimbursement, providers are forced to absorb rising costs, threatening the sustainability of high-quality, client-centred services. Urgent change is needed to protect the future of these essential supports.”
Quentin Aisbett, SEO Strategist, Searcht
“Share of Search is a strong indicator of business health because it shows whether people are actively thinking about, seeking out, and prioritising your brand. It’s not just an SEO metric — it’s a demand signal. As Les Binet has shown, brands tend to grow when their Share of Search exceeds their Share of Market.
In a fragmented search/discovery environment including Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and marketplaces — search behaviour reflects mental availability. If more people are searching for your brand/business, or for you within a category, it indicates awareness, trust, and relevance are being built.”
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